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News Roundup for October 9- November 6 2011

Wow, I didn't realize how long it's been since I've done my last news roundup, I got a lot to catch up on. Well I already got the two biggest pieces of news in recent weeks reported, let's get on with the other stuff:

- First let's talk about some other VIZ stuff besides Alpha. The new issue of Shonen Jump just came out on November 1st, and finally after so many issues of "Naruto" and Bleach" making the cover we finally get some "One Piece" love:

A few weeks ago this link included release dates for later "One Piece" volumes, if I remember correctly I think up to volume 64. I don't know why VIZ took those down, perhaps they're shuffling things around.

According to Simon & Schuster the print editions of volumes 63 and 64 will be released July 3rd, 2012 and September 4th, 2012, respectively:

- Japanese 7-11s started a new "One Piece" promotional campaign. By buying food and "One Piece" merchandise you can accumulate point on your receipt, which will go towards giving out "One Piece" prizes to 4,100 lucky people. And just starting a few days ago on November 4th, if you purchase certain bottled drinks you can get "One Piece" keitai straps:

- ICv2 recently came out with their top manga properties of summer 2011 based on interviews with selected venues in North America. "One Piece" placed #10 in the overall top 25 category and #8 in the top 10 shonen properties:

- Some cool new pieces of merchandise were in late October. Panasonic is coming out with a rechargeable battery on November 21st, RAY-OUT started coming out on November 5th with some iPhone jackets, and coolest of all HAPPINET is coming out with a Chopper loud-speaker doll on November 12th:

- KANRO co. polled 800 men and women between the ages of 20 and 50 asking them what their favorite anime voice is. In the top 10 results, Luffy tied with Minami Asakura from "Touch" at #7 as voted by 18 people. Zoro came in at #10 with 15 votes:

- On October 20th Japanese shopping site BANDAI FASHION NET started taking pre-orders for a green Haramaki based on the one Zoro wears. It's priced at 3,900 yen (about $50.81), and starts shipping this December:

- Consumer and Economic Division of Fukuoka Prefectural Police announced that by October 16th they had arrested six men for using flie-sharing software to illegally upload 42 anime/manga/game items to the Internet between April 2010 to May 2011. One of the items mentioned was the "One Piece" manga:

- "One Piece" wasn't mentioned specifically in this news item, but it's obvious to me it's a part of it. On October 12th it was announced an art exhibition will be taking place in Japan that features art from series in five of Shueisha's famous Jump magazines. Of course this includes Weekly Shonen Jump. I haven't seen any dates yet, however the exhibition will be taking place in Shizuoka, Osaka, Takamatsu, Kokura, Hiroshima, Nagoya, Sapporo, Niigata, and Sendai:

- "One Piece 3D Gekisō! Trap Coaster" is a new 3D animated short that will be running at stereoscopic 3D theaters at Aichi Prefecture's Lagunasia theme park, Nagasaki Prefecture's Huis Ten Bosch theme park, Kanagawa Prefecture's Yokohama Landmark Tower, and Hiroshima Prefecture's NTT CRED Hall. It will run at about 12 minutes and be released December 1st:

- Toei Animation recently came out with their 2011 earnings and they did pretty damn good, with some big thanks to "One Piece" of course. They reported their current fiscal year's second quarter, which ended in September, through rankings of their top properties, however those numbers also included the first fiscal year, which ran from April 2010 through March 2011. Domestically and in overseas film/T.V./releases "One Piece" was their #1 property, gaining 2.380 billion yen/US$31.4 million and 427 million yen/US$5.63 million, respectively. In the overseas licensing category "One Piece" was second only to "Dragonball", gaining 94 million yen/US$1.24 million:

- Finally, this isn't "One Piece" related, but I thought it was worth mentioning. It's not offical, but if you check out the second-latest news post on daizex.com, it looks like Manga UK is finally releasing "DBZ" in the U.K.:

Now as some of you may or may not know, Manga U.K. has been unable to release Toei Animation properties for quite some time because of high licesing fees. With the way things are looking, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for "One Piece" fans in the U.K.?